She is 92 and you never would have guessed it. There’s the cane in her right hand when she answers the door of her neatly appointed house on East 39th Street, but you still wouldn’t hazard that Louise Brown is that old, either by her younger appearance or sharp wit.

But there is one area where her age has dictated a change: Brown no longer cooks, which makes the local Meals on Wheels program administered by Senior Citizens Inc. an indispensable element in her daily life.

The local Meals on Wheels program, which serves about 1,800 seniors across six coastal counties, delivers a hot meal to Brown five days a week. It usually arrives just before lunch time, but Brown waits until later in the afternoon to enjoy it.

“I’ve never had a bad one,” said Brown, who lost her husband John about 15 years ago and now has a live-in helper. “They don’t bring me fish, which is good. I don’t like fish. I like to catch ’em, but I don’t like to eat them.”

And what will it mean to Brown if the federal budget cuts mandated by sequestration proceed to tear the financial heart out of nutrition programs and force administrators to roll back services or trim the number of seniors eligible for the delivered meals?

“It means I’d have to eat peanut butter and jelly or eat my lunch out of some box,” she said.

Senior Citizens Inc. is mobilizing to help Brown and other seniors who depend on the daily meals with an innovative lobbying strategy to help return the $80,000 in funds, or about 14 percent of the local Meals on Wheels annual budget that sequestration has cut.

On Wednesday, many of the approximately 65 seniors who daily frequent the senior center at Thunderbolt’s Neighborhood Center on Russell Street showed up to jot messages on paper plates that will be mailed to local U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and John Isakson and U.S. Reps. Jack Kingston and John Barrow.

Lyons said 28 percent of the Meals on Wheels annual budget comes directly in the form of federal dollars and that the escalating loss of those funds severely imperil the scope and effectiveness of the program.

“We’re really hoping that we’re were not going to have to cut anybody from the program or change how people are eligible,” Lyons said. “Maybe sequestration turns out to be temporary or maybe we can make up for the lost funds with increased donations. We may have to make some difficult decisions in the next couple months.”

The messages written by the Thunderbolt seniors on Wednesday were uniformly simple and clear: Meals on Wheels is a valuable program that shouldn’t be used as a political football in the ongoing partisan stagnation of the Congress and the federal government.

Thunderbolt resident Penny Lane’s message to Kingston was in the form of a question: “Have you ever been hungry? Don’t vote to cut our money.”

Lane, financially secure enough not to need Meals on Wheels, is nonetheless outraged that such a basic and successful program is being endangered by political bickering.

“There are people who don’t have food,” she said. “I don’t have to scrimp and save to get my next meal. But it’s hard for a lot of seniors.”

Around her, the long tables were a beehive of penmanship, with paper plate after paper plate filled with messages that put a voice to those who could lose such a basic service.

Susie Bunger, 92, also of Thunderbolt, sat near the windows finishing her message on the paper plate destined for Isakson. “A lot of people are hungry,” it read. “Please don’t cut anything that will hurt them.”

A thrice-weekly visitor to the senior center, where she partakes in the subsidized daily meals (she pays 55 cents each day), Bunger was asked how it would impact her if Meals on Wheels and other nutrition programs are ravaged.

“I have to admit I don’t depend on it entirely,” Bunger said. “But some people do. So, if they’re cut, it would hurt me to see other people hurt.”

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the paper plates to the wrong people. They should send them to Kind Obamie. I would also suggest they send used ones instead of wasting a good plate. Obamie don't really give a .... about the citizens of this country.

It looks like the Seniors will be the first to take a Big Hit from Obammy. Just give em a little blue pill. Remember that one concerning diabetics and cancer victims? One day Obama will be old, but to him, he's the Omnipotent One! Shameful, our Seniors are suffering in this manner! Shame, Shame!